John Henson, who occasionally performed as a puppeteer in the Muppets troupe his father founded, died Friday of a heart attack at his home in upstate New York. He was 48 and did not have a history of heart trouble, his sister Cheryl said.

John Henson sometimes performed as Sweetums, a large, hairy Muppet who towered over other puppets and humans. Henson played the character for a while at a Muppets movie/live-action attraction at Disney World, where he would suddenly run into the audience near the end to screams of delight from fans, said Brian Jay Jones, whose biography on Jim Henson came out last year.

"Our story here goes back 12,000 years," Michael Perkins tells a visiting group at the Orange County Regional History Center, referring to the ancient Indians who migrated into Florida when the wildlife included 12-foot-tall mammoths.